


Weird.

by illicio



Category: DOGS (Manga)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:17:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1975728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illicio/pseuds/illicio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written back in 2008; focuses primarily on Badou getting to know Heine.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Weird.

**Author's Note:**

> Written back in 2008; focuses primarily on Badou getting to know Heine.

 

 

 

 

 

        From dog collars to high collars, scarves to bandannas, ribbons to neck ties (on those occasions, if he'd combed his hair just right, if he'd been a little more refined -- a little less prone to severe lapses in sanity -- he'd have looked like Giovanni) -- Badou had seen his partner wear a lot of interesting things in lieu of bandages for the sake of hiding his neck, like there was a good reason -- like he had a secret.

        And he did, but Badou had a habit of being honest: Heine was shit at keeping it hidden.

        It was weird, he thought, standing in the doorway of what you could tentatively call a kitchen. At that moment, it looked like a toddler's playground where someone needed a fierce scolding for breaking out the war paint and smattering bloody massacre over the fridge, floors, counters, and walls.

 

 

 

 

 

_He held it in his lungs. When he exhaled, he inhaled it second-hand through his nose. Waste not, want not, they always said. (No matter how much he did it, he always found himself craving more.) Did anybody ever listen to themselves when they recycled the same old shit through their mouths the same way he was recycling his smoke?_

_Probably not._

_His eye slid back into focus. At the same time, his expression crashed like the first time he'd gotten into a car with Heine. (That was a whole different story._ When the hell did you learn how to dri--oh my God, you didn't. You really didn't. This is the first time you've driv- _followed by_ Shut up, you're distracting me _followed by_ Fucking shit, let me take over! You're gonna hit th--I'm just gonna cover my eye. Gonna cover my eye. Gonna covohshitohshitohshit _followed by_ Thought you covered your eye _and it was at that time Badou understood what it was like to be the parent of a teenage driver.)_

_He wasn't impressed with the television. His lips parted, like he was about to say something._

_Unfortunately, his partner beat him to it: "Don't like _Madeline_?" he wondered, a spoon in his mouth and a can of half-eaten peas (uncooked. Like any other stray, Heine would eat anything if it sat in front of him long enough) wedged between the couch cushions. "Should've said sooner. It's been five minutes; now I wanna see what happens." His body was stretched out on the left side of the couch, half-splayed over the arm rest, and contorted into a position even a cat would find uncomfortable, arm draped over the remote control like a grand guard dog's paw._

_Fucker, Badou thought, but his expression smoothed out and he sank his head back into the cushion (he was on the couch, too, on the other side). His voice lifted like gravel, the sound of someone who hasn't spoken in quite some time and has years and years of tar building up to the point where it's amazing any air gets through to them at all, "Remind me of that girl with the ribbon around her neck."_

_"What?" The response was so candid it even surprised Badou, whose eyebrows lifted. The spoon dropped from Heine's mouth and landed in his lap without a sound. When he tilted a look over his shoulder, it was with sincerity and slight terror he wondered, "You really watch this?" _Enough to know about the characters?_ was what could be read in Heine's somewhat horrified expression._

_His partner never said that much, but Badou learned to fill in the blanks. "Hell no!" he barked. "I mean that girl with the ribbon in that one story."_

_Heine lifted the remote and casually clicked a button when _Madeline_ went to commercial. "Jaaaaa," he drawled. "The story with the thing that one time in that place, with the girl. Got it."_

_"Asshole," Badou exhaled, inhaling another lungful of recycled smoke. When he exhaled that as well, he continued, "It's the story where the girl has some boyfriend and he asks why she wears a ribbon around her neck." _Click._ "She says she'll tell him when the time's right, so--" _clickclick_ "--he shuts up about it for a while." _Click._ "They get married." _Click._ "The guy falls deathly ill and is about to croak." _Click._ "His wife sits next to him and tells him it's time for him to know why she wears the ribbon." _Click._ "She has him p--turn it back."_

_"What." This time, it was clearly not the question variety._

_"Put the baby duck back on. It was cute. See how it was wiggling its ass?"_

_"Um... somehow, that wasn't really what I was looking at."_

_"Turn it, or I'm gonna spill your peas."_

_"Do what you want. It's not my couch." Even so, Heine clicked back._

_This must have satisfied Badou, who continued his story. "Anyway, she tells him it's time for him to know." Heine watched the reflection of the duck in Badou's eye, which was tired and focused ahead, open but seeing nothing. Heine did well enough running for days without sleep. Badou, on the other hand, didn't. "So she leads his hand to the ribbon and tells him to pull it. Suddenly, her head falls off."_

_Heine stared._

_Badou exhaled another lungful of smoke._

_In a voice that would have been curious and child-like, if only those qualities were any part of Heine at all, Heine wondered, "So, what happened?"_

_"Ah? What do you mean?"_

_"That's it?"_

_"What, you expect me to get all romantic and philosophical? All right, here's some closure: Suddenly, her head falls off. The end."_

_"The hell kind of ending is that? What happened to the guy?"_

_The redhead grinned around his cigarette and offered, "Died a few hours later from a heart attack since his wife's head fell off and onto him, I guess."_

_Badou's eye began to slip to the side when it caught movement. Heine's hands were upon his own neck, twisting and removing the red ribbon that had been wrapped there since his bandages had been torn to shreds on their earlier job._

_The ribbon entwined around his fingers like a thin dead thing. Heine tipped his head from left to right. Suddenly, he said, "No luck."_

_Badou's expression didn't change. A pathetic stream of smoke left his mouth, like an impotent dragon. "Well, shit."_

_That was the last sentence he managed to get out before his world went black with sleep._

 

 

 

 

 

        The kitchen reeked like ammonia and rust.

        "Couldn't wait, eh?" he wondered half-heartedly, because he caught a glimpse of the bloody print on the refrigerator's handle.

        Far too frequently, he'd come home to a scene like this: the floor awash in blood and Heine laying face-down in the middle of it like a corpse in a swimming pool, like the ground was as good of a place as anywhere to suddenly drop and sleep the dead sleep of recovery.

        Maybe, to a dog like that, it was just nice to be out of the rain.

        The first time it had happened, Badou had tried to take his partner's pulse. These days, it was a miracle if Heine's unconscious body received a passing nudge from the toe of his boot. One could get the impression the only reason Badou sank like a trade ship under siege by pirates at his partner's side tonight, his arms draped over his knees and a thin line of smoke trailing from the red end of a cigarette (much closer to the butt than it had been a few moments ago), was because he was an inconvenient block preventing entry to the fridge.

        Dully, he remarked, "If they ever suspect me of killing anybody and come and luminol the place, you're gonna make it really fucking hard to explain."

        The first time it had happened, Heine's body reacted long before he woke up. That's when Badou learned his partner didn't need to be awake in order for the instincts to kick in and snarl _Don't touch me!_ and _Fuck you!_ and _I'll fuck you up, you fucking fuck!_ all without any semblance of consciousness or a word. These days, Heine's body flinched and tensed, taking a moment to recognize the touch, and then was content to sleep through him the way a mountain sleeps through a tornado.

        Idly, Badou wondered when that changed.

        It was weird.

        "Sorry," he offered when Heine was in his arms, all awkward and stiff limbs. "Just washed my sheets. You'll have to deal with the couch." But he knew neither of them would care about the arrangement even if the positions had been reversed. When he laid his partner to rest on the cushions, the only thing that came to mind was how damn heavy he was. Really damn heavy, for how slim he was. Probably heavier than me, Badou thought. Must have been all the metal in his neck and back and all the rocks in his head.

        His posture straightened and he examined the residual blood on his palms. When his eye rolled over to the rough patch he recognized as a scar, the cigarette drooped with the unhappy stoop of his mouth. Damn thing was so bloody, looked like it opened right up again.

        It was really weird.

        Badou stood over Heine's body in the dim light, wiping his bloody palms on his partner's shoulders even though he was almost certain that would make it even worse.

        The whole damn thing was weird.

        "Get you a bottle of water," he said, voice still dull, as if Heine could hear him.

        As he turned for the kitchen, he thought of the way Heine's head lolled to the side, exposing that gunmetal-coloured secret he so often tried to hide, no dog collars, scarves, bandannas, neckties, bandages, or ribbons in sight.


End file.
